And the plum tree said, Keep your Promises
by Gamblers Choice
Summary: One-Shot response to Kiddway-Headcanon's prompt on Tumblr. "Headcanon: what if one day edward went to tulum to visit mary's grave and she was sitting on the headstone and her arm was in a cast and her head was all wrapped up and she looked like shit but she was sitting there grinning and he just dropped to his knees and started crying"


So here is a One-Shot in response to this post v

Headcanon: what if one day edward went to tulum to visit mary's grave and she was sitting on the headstone and her arm was in a cast and her head was all wrapped up and she looked like shit but she was sitting there grinning and he just dropped to his knees and started crying.

by kiddway-headcanon on Tumblr.

On another note please be patient APLfM readers! I am working very hard to get my creative juices working again! I promsie a new chappy by christamas.

so um yah please review and enjoy this one shot!

* * *

The sky was no different than it had been the last time he came.

It was still muggy, clogged with the kind of pot-bellied haze that likes to linger far too low, the kind that you cant barely see past, the kind that smothers you in a hot, sticky blanket, the kind that you can taste and all you want to do is kick it away but you can't. You cant because muggy clouds cannot be touched, and every time you try all the dark and gloom that hangs too low in the sky just slips through your fingers, like silt… or time.

He remembers, with a crippling sorrow, that there were in fact days when it seemed that there was never enough time. When time was an exciting, fleeting thing, a swift and clever bird that was to be caught and caged so that he might have all the time in the world.

His bird was old and weary of life now, and all that remained of the secretive, stunning black crow he had chased was a single, ebony feather that drooped lifelessly on the bottom of the jackdaw's cage.

He remembered days when there was never enough time, and now there is too much.

Edward grins, but the thing that is stretched upon his face is nasty and dark and bitter and it reflects the torn-to-pieces man inside. His fingers grapple around the small, humble bouquet in their grasp, knuckles bone white as Edward grit his teeth and furrowed his brow and fought with everything he had to not break down now. Not yet.

Now is not the time.

'_There will never be a time. You don't deserve to wallow man, it's your own fault… its all your fault and now you've got t' suffer the consequences.'_ He thinks and usually he'd cast the pitying blame aside and pin it down to be the rum talking, but he's been sober for nearly a year now; And rightfully so, it's all part of his punishment.

'_No. The time was two years ago when she was still smiling and fighting and you were more or less the fool you are now.'_ He thinks to himself, and his eyes are clouded like the sky with a weary bitterness that settles in only after a man has outlived his purpose. His weather worn fingers, tattered and torn like everything else inside of him are clutched tightly around a bunch of flowers, around the message that each blossom carries. There are marigolds that speak of grief and despair. There are Meadow Saffron that wilt and cry in soft purple hues because they bear the message that happier days have passed, and there is a single pink carnation that sings with color against the muggy grey morning and makes its message known.

_I will __never__ forget you._

Yet even against the stark, singing colors of the lone pink carnation, there is another flower, the humble blue primrose, that does naught more than whisper, and yet of all the flowers it's words are the only ones that Edward will ever hear.

_I cannot live __withou__t you_.

He lets his hollow gaze drift, lets it float over the dreary beaches of Tulum that sit in the shadows of the gloomy cast, over the assassins that stalk the island but pay him no mind and he returns the favor. He wonders, for a moment, how this island ever seemed exciting to him, whatever made it spark?

Suddenly he's swept up in memories that seem to spring from every shadow on the island, and suddenly there is the young pirate Mary Read - because when she had brought him here she'd done so as Mary not James – there is a young pirate, brave and beautiful and he's chasing her through dangers that he'd never braved for anyone but himself before. He's barreling through the dense, jungled thickets of Tulum and his feet are crashing against the hard-packed earth – _Too loud! An assassin is quiet, like the leopard!-_ and he is travelling a path that has been trod one too many times before.

Vaguely, Edward registers the _one-two, one-two _motion of his real feet - not the ones that carried a man with hope - as they began to move but he is too busy in the past to wonder where they are taking him. The path that is well worn to Edward is not really a path at all, at least it is not the one forged from the grass and weeds and other shrubby things that grow native on Tulum. No. This path is cut from the deepest despairing, miserable fields of agony that are ripe in his heart, it is a path well worn and well walked in the sorry pastures that take root inside of him.

But Edward is not walking the dry, dead paths inside a broken man. He is chasing Mary Read right now, and suddenly they've broken through the fog and he can see the ocean, sparkling and clean and blue and clear.

And Mary Read is standing there with her army crossed, hip cocked and there is that haughty teasing smirk, the one so familiar to Edward that it hurts, painted upon her lips. She's decked out in James Kidd's garb, but that is only because he is the pirate part of her, and her hair is long like Mary's and Edward cannot choke down the sorry-happy tears that are clogging his eyes and his heart. She is beautiful, standing there with dark locks tousled by sea breeze in the shade of the Plum tree.

Edward looks at the Plum tree, beautiful and in full bloom just like Mary and when he hears it whisper '_Keep your promise' _the walls he had worked so hard to erect come crashing down. He cries, for the Plum tree tells him that none of this is real.

Because Mary Read was beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time.

When Edward open's his eyes again – his real eyes, not the eyes of a man with a flame to chase, and a reason to live, and someone he loved who loved him back – there is a spark, one cast by the flint and iron of memories long past and it lights the stormy seas of his eyes for just a moment with crackling, blue electricity. But the spark sputters, and the embers die as he looks out among the gloomy haze and even further to the ocean which cannot be tamed and who's beauty will not be squandered by a few low hung clouds.

He realizes, belatedly, that his eyes are red and itchy and there are tears running down his cheeks like rain. But Edward, for all the strength in the world, cannot wipe them away. Whether it be because they remind him of the sweet fantasies that caused the tears, or because he feels like he deserves to be unmanned like so and suffer the punishment (because really, his ego had sputtered and died as soon as her breath had) he will never know. What he does know is that his hand is still limp by his side and there are still tears, as cold and salty as the sea, on his cheeks.

What he does know is that he stands in the shade of the Plum Tree that mocks him so, for it has only lost a few blossoms and lives while Mary has none of her own.

Above all else, Edward feels the looming, crippling presence of Mary's grave behind his back, and it is all Edward can do not to crumble and fall to his knees because his heart is somehow breaking even more, somehow the feeling that evades him has been restored by some sick presence just so he can feel the pain of a thousand swords in his heart over and over again.

_It is all, your fault!_

Suddenly he's back in the musty, squalor of the jail and –_oh no! God's please no!_- Mary is dying in his arms again. He can feel the light, flutter of her heartbeat, feel it being smothered like the light in her fiery hazel eyes and vaguely he registers himself begging her not to go.

"_I'll be with you Kenway."_

"Kenway."

"Kenway?"

It's the fire, the _living breathing _sound of her voice that snaps him back to the present. His eyes are still squeezed shut, there are tears still ghosting down his cheeks and there is the silent crunch of flower stems beneath his fist. But he hears none of it, only the sound of her voice can be heard by Edward and he begs the God's above to please let this be real.

"Edward?" The voice comes again, but now his eyes are open because there is a chance, there is some small impossible chance that she might be there and he has always been a fool.

So he takes the chance, and turns around.

"Did'ya keep your promise, aye' Kenway? 'Ave you done your part?"

His first reaction is not to reason, not to sit and wonder why her ghost has come to haunt him now (she did say she'd always be with him), not to do anything that any man with an ounce of chivalry would do. No. The first thing Edward Kenway does is drop the flowers, teary-eyed with a slackjawed smile on his face, and sink to the ground as his knees buckle under him.

She's sitting lazily on the headstone that marks her grave, one leg draped over the rock while the other is tucked to her chest. Her arm, the left one is also tucked to her chest, clad in what appears to be a shoddy, self-done wrapping job because Mary never learned the art of nursing as a child. Unconsciously, he peruses her form, soaking up every detail like a sponge and with mild interest he notes that the '1720' on her headstone has been crossed out.

She is dressed in the same clothes that James Kidd always wore, only the coat is undone and the blouse is a few buttons shy of being proper (not that she ever cared). A bandage, peppered in red messy splotches peeks out from behind the too-low blouse, but before Edward can wonder who's blood that is his gaze wanders to the cleavage, less restrained than he has ever seen it in broad daylight, that flirts from behind the heavy green leather of Mary's jacket.

She is a few years older, just like him.

He follows the slender lines of her neck, past deep, oaken locks that are just a bit longer now until his eyes settle on her face. Her beautiful face. It is still boyish, with sharp hard lines because Mary Read is just like that, sharp like the sea. Her lips are rouged with what he can only assume to be her own blood (something that had always inexplicably turned him on), and there are a few more scars, only small ones, that nestle in the hollow of her cheek and on the bridge of her nose. She is beautiful, not like Caroline, but a different brand of beautiful that is hard and daring and worn smooth in some places like stone in the sea.

Edward doesn't realize he's been holding his breath this hold time until his own gaze, the kind of blue that peers from the eyes of a child, young and innocent and imploring, meets Mary's eyes. They are still hazel, still extraordinary, still dazzling, still fiery and daring like the person they belonged too. Only now, Mary's eyes sparkle with something that Edward has wished upon many a shooting star to see – life.

Something, (_euphoria? Relief? Liberation? No. That's not it.)_ Something that could only be described as having a part of oneself returned to them after a thousand years of being only half a person worked it's way up through Edward and in one single motion, erupted.

He was suddenly on his feet, and the next moment she was in his arms and he was laughing and crying and so unlike himself but he didn't care, because she was _here_ and _breathing _and _alive_ _alive alive!_ Edward crushed her into his embrace, and swung her about despite her protests because it was Mary and she was doing what Mary's do and life was suddenly bright and beautiful and how?

He was a pirate, he'd killed more than enough to spend a life time in hell, so what did he do to deserve her? How?

The words brushed past his lips, and Edward silently reveled in the shiver that seemed to course through Mary's spine when the hot air graced her ear. "How?"

He felt her smirk against him and pull back a bit, and reluctantly he allowed her warmth to hover so tantalizingly close, and looked into her eyes. "Aye' the carribean ain't 'xactly what I woul' call 'brimmin' with medical prowess' now is it?" He chuckled beside himself and shook his head no. "Well, mentor had me taken to some place in - now what was it? – ah yes, Asia. They did some mystical shite that I don' really want t' waste mah breath on and well, I'm here now." She beamed at him through that sassy smirk of hers and Edward couldn't help but pull her to his chest again.

Maybe it was mostly so she wouldn't see him cry anymore, or maybe it was just because after two years of separation he wanted to feel what was missing, wanted to feel it thrum with life against his skin and just _be happy_ for the first time in a too-long time. He buried his face into the crook of her neck, nuzzled about in her sweet, salty smelling locks again, careful not to brush the white bandage across her temple, before he whispered "Your alive. God damnit your alive." His voice is cracking and he's pretty sure he's crying but he doesn't care, not right now. Not when she is here.

She pulls back, gently this time and fixes him with a gaze that says everything she cant, and still she leans up (Edward realizes that she has to stand on her tip toes) and stops just a hairs breadth away from his chapped lips. Hot air mingles between them for a moment, and then she tilts her head forward and mutters against his lips.

"I tol' you Kenway. I'd be with you."


End file.
